If you can’t beat them, join them.

That’s the case in Mississippi, where the staffs of Mississippi State and Ole Miss will join Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh and his staff in a camp held in Pearl, Miss.

What Harbaugh will be able to do at this camp is look for and woo players from a state that, along with Louisiana, produces more NFL players per capita. What Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen and Ole Miss’ Hugh Freeze will be there to do is defend their home turf.

That doesn’t seem like a winning proposition for Mississippi’s SEC schools, but a great deal for Harbaugh.

That’s the result of the NCAA lifting a ban on “satellite” camps — camps held by colleges away from campus — in April. After the brief ban was lifted, the SEC also lifted its ban on camps held more than 50 miles away from campus.

Who are the winners and losers (and the indifferent) emerging from this? Let’s take a look:

Winner: Big Ten

Harbaugh has become the poster boy for the satellite camp, and a big reason his staff hits the road to SEC country is you have to go to where the players are.

If you’re looking for states that produce the most NFL players per capita, you can start with states that touch the Gulf of Mexico and every state that does that is in the SEC footprint. So, by allowing a powerhouse program like Michigan into the SEC footprint to recruit, it gives Harbaugh an advantage.

Certainly, SEC teams can reciprocate — and Alabama will, with a coach headed to Detroit for a camp — but the bottom line is statistics tell us that Michigan is more likely to find a player down South that can help its program than Alabama is to find a player in Michigan.

So, advantage Big Ten powers.

Loser: Second-tier SEC programs

But here’s the reality: Michigan and other northern programs may face an uphill battle trying to convince top-tier kids in states like Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and Florida to walk away from their home state power programs to go North. The SEC powers will make the compelling argument that the best talent is in the SEC, so why leave?

However, there could be a different dynamic in a state like Mississippi. While there is a lot of per-capita talent in the state, it’s also the second smallest state in the SEC in terms of population, ahead of only Arkansas. Unlike Arkansas, it has two SEC programs.

Their programs’ postseason histories are modest and while both programs have been to major bowls in the last couple of seasons — Ole Miss to the Sugar Bowl last season and MSU to the Orange Bowl the year before — a Big Ten power can sell a kid on an opportunity to play for a national championship while downplaying the chance of the Mississippi schools ever getting to that threshold.

Indifferent: Texas, Florida and Georgia programs

While a satellite camp in Pearl may give somebody like Harbaugh new insight in a talent-rich area, coaches in highly populated states like Texas, Florida and Georgia will probably shrug their shoulders at the notion of out-of-area programs finding new ways to recruit their home area.

If you want to find a mini college coaches’ convention, go to a high school of a top prospect in Dallas, Miami or Atlanta.

Satellite camps can’t make the out-of-state interest of prospects in these talent rich states any greater than it already is. The major metros of the South have always been desired destinations for far-off recruiters because their sheer size and football culture make for productive recruiting trips.

For example, there are considerably more people in football-mad Greater Houston (6.3 million) than there is in the entire states of Alabama (4.8 million) or Louisiana (4.65 million). So it makes sense for a coach to go there. One can see a lot of prospects in a short period (but good look against all the competition!).

So what’s the reaction to the news of yet another way for out-of-state coaches to see the local players?

Yawn.

Winner: Second-tier Gulf South prospects

One misconception about recruiting is that it’s this two-dimensional game. The best players go to the A-list schools, the second-best players go to the B schools, etc.

The reality is, it’s a much more nuanced process.

Schools and players have their “A list” of desires. However, reality hits and usually the schools can’t land all their A-list wants, and most players don’t ever get offers from their “dream” programs. But what happens when the A-list school has to go to plan B?

That is where exposure to camps can help a player. Let’s take Nebraska tight end Cethan Carter as an example.

As a senior at Archbishop Rummel in suburban New Orleans in 2012, Carter was a late bloomer who received mostly mid-major interest before his high school made a surprising run to the Louisiana Class 5A state championship with the help of some impressive performances by Carter. He caught the attention of Nebraska (then coached by former LSU assistant Bo Pelini) and was offered a scholarship. He committed to the Huskers in January.

By then, LSU, which was still evaluating Carter when Nebraska offered, had also offered him a scholarship probably after missing out on a couple of recruits the Tigers thought more highly of. But Carter stuck with Nebraska, the major program that believed in him first.

It’s worked out well for Nebraska, which found a tight end that has started 25 games for the Huskers heading into his senior season.

That kind of story happens all the time in recruiting. While it may be hard for a Northern program to go toe-to-toe with an LSU or Alabama for an obviously “elite” recruit, it can gain an advantage with that second-tier prospect by establishing a positive relationship first. Satellite camps certainly can help with that.

For that prospect, having an offer from a Power 5 program can give him leverage in his relationship with the local power, perhaps forcing the local school to commit to him earlier if it doesn’t want to risk losing him to the out-of-area program.

Winners: Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas

In the SEC’s post-spring teleconference, no coach expressed more pleasure with the lifting of the satellite camp ban than Arkansas coach Bret Bielema.

Arkansas is not among the Gulf Coast states that produce so many players. Its per-capita production of talent is more like a midwestern state. Given that it’s also a small state, that has made the Razorbacks more dependent on out-of-state talent than other programs.

The same is true of Missouri and Tennessee. All three programs are considered high-end SEC programs, but in order to reach expectations, they rely heavily on out-of-state prospects.

At Missouri, former coach Gary Pinkel competed in the Big 12 and, later, in the program’s first couple of years in the SEC while relying heavily on Texas prospects. Tennessee’s glory days under Phil Fulmer happened during an era when the Vols were routinely able to pilfer prospects from states like South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana.

In that regard, these programs are almost like Michigans within the SEC footprint. They can go to the talent-rich states and try to woo players their way — and with the recent success of Missouri and the histories at Tennessee and Arkansas, they stand a reasonable chance.

But with their own modest recruiting bases, it’s unlikely that the Alabamas, Georgias and LSUs will ever return fire by investing much effort in recruiting those states in return.